For the 9th time, the Academy of Media Arts Cologne together with the WRD Broadcasting Company are organising the kurzundschön awards with focus on commercial spots, tv design and short films. kurzundschön is open for students with focus on the moving-image media: design and film schools, art academies, trainees from PR-companies, broadcasting stations and production companies. A total of 18.000 EUR as well as a number of other special prizes are awarded in the categories commercial spots, tv design, short film and the special WDR category. Deadline for entries 2006: 15 July 2006 kurzundschön – history kurzundschön, a competition for shortest short films, was founded in 1998 by Stephan Boeder*, Professor for Electronic Imaging, in cooperation with the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and the WDR Broadcasting Company. The impetus for the competition was the increasing number of visual short forms appearing on TV since the 1980s, such as programme trailers, lavishly designed opening titles, channel identities, commercial spots for broadcasting stations and promotional campaigns. The result was a new and very specific visual language. These visual short forms characterised the broadcasting station’s Corporate Identity: i.e. correspondence between visual language and programme content. Commercial spots, too, have become vital part in today’s television landscape. In the meantime, these filmic short formats are common standard in the television and film industry. kurzundschön aims at promoting and encouraging young talents to work with these formats in a creative way. * Between 1982 and 1984, as head of the design department at WDR, he was the originator of the first Corporate Design for the broadcasting group ARD and responsible for the ARD logo. Today, the Corporate Design of ARD has become its Corporate Identity.